


Of Schoolgirl Crushes

by notaluu



Category: RWBY
Genre: Crushes, F/M, Rejection, Romance, introspective, school days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 16:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30058035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaluu/pseuds/notaluu
Summary: In this castle he could almost convince her that life is not a nightmare but a living dream. But Ruby is determined to look reality in the face instead and take it all in without being blinded by the pink rose of innocent youth.She will let him go.
Relationships: Ozma/Ruby Rose (RWBY)
Kudos: 4





	Of Schoolgirl Crushes

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Shine

The day Ruby realises she’s crushing on her headmaster is the day she and Yang, along with more than half of the first years, skip Professor Port’s usually droning lessons to watch the first advanced sparring lesson for the fourth years.

It’s tradition.

“You’ve heard this speech at this academy before,” the Professor says, smiling ironically as he walks like a lazy cat across the podium to the small group of fourth years. “But you have been selected among the rest of your peers as the best of the best at what you do—the future huntsmen and huntresses with most potential. And so you are in my class—“

Ruby leans her elbows on her knees and rests her chin in her hands, letting the pleasant calm of his voice wash over her without really taking in the rest of his words.

Around them, the first, second, and third year students are enraptured by the man on the stage, whose words command them so easily. It’s rare to see him out among the students and his presence always has an impact.

Except on Ruby, who knows this soft old man likes hot chocolate and doesn’t sleep well for nightmares. Except for this odd companion from kitchen meetings that she has obtained over the last couple of months because Weiss finally got sick of Ruby studying late into the night in their dorm and kicked her out. There’s something indescribably _old_ about her professor, sometime timeless, and it’s not just the grey hair that makes it look like nature wanted people to forget who… what he is.

So he doesn’t have an impact on her anymore.

Or so Ruby thinks until he calls the first student up to the stage for the first demonstration.

In nothing but baggy black pants, bare feet, and a tank top her professor suddenly has an age again. Lithe, elegant and beautiful he dances easily around the student’s attacks, dodging blows and somersaulting over kicks. He’s fast and precise, the best huntsman in the world, muscled carved like a marble statue and Ruby—

Ruby can’t breathe, can’t think, is mesmerised and enchanted by the professor on the stage, draped in the light of a golden sun.

Beside her, Yang exhales a sigh of admiration. “So there’s was a worthy opponent in this place, after all.”

Her little sister laughs at the stars in her eyes. “Isn’t that what you wanted to check.”

“Well, yeah,” Yang says, grinning and pulling an arm around Ruby’s neck. “Just you wait, Ruby. I’m going to get into that class. And I’m going to kick his ass.”

Ruby smiles with all the indulgent love of an adoring little sister before glancing back at her professor. “I want to see that,” she says, unable to keep the envy out of her voice.

* * *

This is what she knows about Professor Ozpin.

He was friends with her parents and her uncle. Her father always talks of him with admiration in his voice; says he is a kind leader, a wise man. Someone to look up to.

Like the heroes in the fairy tales she grew up with, there are stories of him that she feels can hardly be true—even if the demonstrations at Beacon certainly seem to say otherwise. Like the heroes in fairy tales he speaks of righteousness and faith in humanity.

But he is softer than she imagined of a hero, of a headmaster, of a politician.

He stumbles sleepily into the student kitchen late at night because it’s the only way Glynda Goodwitch doesn’t catch him drinking hot chocolate and neglecting his paperwork. He wears thick sweaters and too woollen turtle necks that are just a tiny bit tacky, as if he wants to hide exactly how impressive he actually is. He teaches a class on fairy tales to the second years and they say it’s the only times he sounds absolutely enthusiastic about something—if he were Ruby’s age she would laugh at him and call him a nerd.

She used to laugh at him.

Now she skips every other one of Professor Port’s lessons to watch him dance around his students.

Weiss scoffs at her, when she wanders late into the library with extra assignments and extra readings she has to do for punishments.

“I know you’re bad at sparring,” she says, “and maybe I’d be more interested in what goes on in that other class if swords were involved, but you need to think about the classes you have in front of you now.”

Ruby sighs dejectedly as she flops into her chair, weight of all her books pulling her down. “It’s not like he ever goes over any of the material in the books anyway,” she whines, depositing the workload on the desk, toppling over Weiss’ wisely selected waterbottle. “And besides. Dad’s a huntsman too, so I can always hear stories at home.”

“That may be true,” a smooth, familiar voice comes from behind her, and Ruby gasps, spinning in her chair to see her professor behind her. “But Professor Port’s lessons are assigned to you first years for a reason. Without them what you learn next year will be more difficult. And you’re still catching up on your workload from Signal.”

Ruby flushes at the gentle rebuke and slides down in her chair, hoping her can’t see her burning ears.

Weiss narrows her eyes at her.

“What?”

“You’re hopeless.”

Her professor’s laugh echoes in her ear long after he’s left.

* * *

Ruby still comes back to that seat.

She still returns to watch her professor dance with his students.

She just does it more strategically: she plans skipping classes only when she knows she has time to do extra assignments and listen to professor Port’s scoldings for long periods at a time. She also does her best to avoid the student kitchens at night; sneaking into the library after closing hours is easy when can dematerialise and shuffle through the fence meant to keep students from camping out in there.

So he doesn’t need to know she’s tired or overworked. All he needs is to think she’s on top of things so he won’t kick her out.

Which has the added benefit of avoiding him in person.

And the odd thing is; it seems to be working.

As he ducks out from under a student’s attempted blow, he catches her eye. It’s brief. The slightest part of a second, but it burns through her; the grin.

He’s never outright admonished her for getting into trouble, for breaking the rules. He saved her from getting anything on her permanent record when she’d picked a fight with Roman Torchwick, probably paid for the damages to the Dust shop’s window, as well, and sometimes he seems to downright encourage rule breaking—though, she has no definitive proof yet.

Yet.

This is her first real attempt at pushing boundaries and seeing how much she can get away with.

It had been harder at Signal; uncle Qrow would let her do pretty much whatever she wanted, but her father had been much, much stricter—on both his daughters.

And her professor has never directly commented on or responded to her skipping classes to come see the performance. This is the first time. And Ruby sits up in her seat, catching her breath in an inaudible gasp.

Her face burns.

It gets more difficult, concentrating after that. She watches a slew of people getting nudged over the line with easy grace, watches him play with them as if they were tottering five-year olds, but none of it sinks in. Distracted, she watches them go, one after another, students and audience members who had had a free session. Their excited chatter envelopes her and then vanishes, like fog from the ocean passing her by, shapeless and nearly unnoticed.

“You’re off your game today, Ruby.”

A damp towel drops over her head, and she starts.

Before she can do something stupid—like smelling the towel—she whips it off her head to scowl up at him. “What was that for?”

It’s a mistake.

Far away he’s just a line of thin muscle and elegant movements. Far away he’s indeterminate, like a star, or a sun; like his arey hair.

But up close—

Up close she can see the way the black shirt plasters to his chest, how his silver hair clings to his face, and red blooms gently on his cheeks. His eyes glow with the exercise and he has never been more beautiful.

Ruby flushes and quickly turns away, holding up the towel for him to take. “You stink.”

Her professor laughs. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

So used to amiably arguing with her friends, with her other teachers, with her uncle, and even with this odd headmaster of hers, her head whirls back, as if his words have tugged a string connecting them, _it wasn’t. Go shower, already_ vehemently sticking to her lips.

But he tilts his head and his golden eyes burn, and there is no soft amiability in him. Like a gust of a hot summer wind _something_ passes through her, something new and old and _familiar_ passes through her—like she’s been her before, like the sun has carved an emotion into her before, and Ruby is caught, is trapped, the world falling away from her so there is only her and this man, for a single moment, a breath between heartbeats that lasts for an eternity.

Sometimes her professor feels more like a king.

“Thank you, miss Rose,” he says, when she doesn’t immediately respond, gingerly taking back the towel without touching her fingers.

And that name, too, feels old and new at the same time, even though he never uses it.

“Do you ever take a hit in these classes?” she hears herself asking.

He smiles. “No,” he says, stops, ponders. “Once in a while. Summer Rose was particularly good at using her semblance to get the better of me.”

As if for emphasis he holds up a red rose petal for her to see, one he had caught when she’d been too preoccupied with her embarrassment. And it feels a little like having part of her heart trapped between his fingers.

“But the point is not,” he says, pocketing the petal. “To be hit, or caught. And the students know that. The point is for me to keep being an unreachable target, to always challenge them right outside of their comfort zone, so they’ll keep inventing new techniques and new methods for combat. After all, the same methods might continue working for low level Grimm, but humanity is a well-spring of creativity and no two humans are ever alike.”

And Ruby exhales a breath she hadn’t know she was holding.

_Ah, he is a teacher after all._

She leans back in her seat, stretching her arms in front of her, smiling like a mischievous child ready for her scolding. “Are you trying to tell me something, professor?”

He grins. “Yes,” he says. “Professor Port and Doctor Oobleck say your reports are in the top five. Good job finally catching up.”

His large hand is gentle on top of her head as he pats her, praises her, and Ruby lowers her head so he can’t see the blush covering her cheeks.

* * *

Winter comes, and with it the exams of the first trimester.

It had been rough. Harder than any exams Ruby had ever had to take during her time at Signal--and it hadn’t been made any easier by the fact that she’s two years behind everyone else. She might’ve been told she’s caught up, but catching up just means finally reaching the start line while everyone else have already sprinted ahead.

And it doesn’t help Weiss’ standards are top marks for the entire team and nothing else.

She’d spent the last three weeks hovering over them like the threat of an ice storm.

“Do you want me to get dragged back to Atlas, is that it?”

“Right now?” Yang had finally snapped. “Yes. Very much!”

Ruby sighs and hides her face in her arms, the chocolate chip cookies she’d baked with her mother’s recipe cast a pleasant smell of sweet celebration over her, but she’s too exhausted to enjoy it.

Of course, they’d all made up in the end, and tomorrow morning when they all leave for the holidays, her entire team are coming with them to Patch for a three week period of relaxation. _That’s_ going to be the real celebration, introducing her team to her father. Running through the snow on Patch, drinking hot chocolate, skating with Weiss, snowball fights—

Well, more snowball fights.

As if the weather had decided to praise them for their hard work, a beautiful snow had begun to fall the day before, fresh clean, and the perfect consistency for a snowball fight.

Jaune hadn’t stood a chance.

Ruby giggles to herself. She’d also had a chance to avenge them all for the gruelling exams by hitting their headmaster square in the face with a snow ball. Much to the surprise and the glee of all the other students.

It feels like a relief, being free from the suffocating emotion that had tightened her heart and made it impossible to laugh at him for weeks and weeks.

Feeling a little more refreshed, she finally lifts her head to shuffle through the book she’d rented from the library. There’s a copy in her father’s house from his time at Beacon, but this one has more stories added to it and is not as old and torn, and Ruby has been itching to pick it up.

She just hadn’t had the time.

The story of the Chill has her skipping several stories ahead, only to smile at the wise thoughts of the Queen in the Indecisive King. And she laughs, reading her professor’s commentary on propaganda at the end of the Girl in the Tower.

A mug of hot chocolate slides across the table to her, and her professor says with stolen amusement “You’re going to have to enlighten me as to what is so funny.”

Ruby jumps in her chair at the sudden presence. “Where did you come from, professor?” She looks in confusion from the relaxed smile on his face to the cups of hot chocolate on the table between them. “And when did you have time to make those?”

He grins. “Magic,” he says, mysteriously.

And she shakes her head at him. “You know, you’re more silly than you make yourself out to be,” she rebukes gently, watching him laugh as he sits down. “You make this great display of your fourth year class so everyone will strive to enter it, but then you also drink hot chocolate and have a sweet tooth.”

Her professor’s hand pauses over the plate of cookies as if he’s been caught doing something wrong. “Anyone who doesn’t have sweet tooth is a misguided fool,” he declares with mock solemnity and dramatically plucks a cookie anyway. “Besides, how do you know the silly isn’t part of my clever plan so my students find me approachable as well, and my enemies underestimate me?”

Ruby narrows her eyes suspiciously at him. She feels like she’s being swept up in a narrow lane that she won’t be able to escape and she doesn’t like it. “Professor,” she says carefully. “Why did professor Goodwitch dump a whole roof load of snow on you earlier today?”

His grin is almost boyish. “It was punishment,” he explains easily with no misdirection, his golden eyes dancing as if he can see where she’s going and is proud of her quick thinking. “For getting carried away and showing off too much.”

Ruby blinks, straightening a little in her chair, trying to get the fairy dust that makes him glow out of her eyes. Then she remembers the vice-headmistress marching past the other day, muttering angrily about what to do “if he resorts to exhibitionism next” and laughing suddenly becomes much, much easier.

“See!” she says, voice still ringing with her laughter. “I knew it. It’s not some amiable little plan to be a good teacher. It’s just so when you actually show off it has more of an effect!”

Her professor smiles, but doesn’t counter her criticism. Instead he nudges her mug of hot chocolate as if this is praise enough for figuring him out, for seeing through him, and takes a bite out of the chocolate chip cookie. His golden eyes never leave her face as she laughs.

When she calms down he looks down into his own mug thoughtfully. His silver hair looks newly washed and he’s in a clean white knitted sweater for once, but she sees the cross hanging from his ear, and the bangs under his eyes, and wonders if maybe exam periods are exhausting for teachers as well as students.

Finally she remembers his original comment.

“You really don’t like the Girl in the Tower, do you?” she asks, her fingers brushing over the beautiful illustration of a woman with golden hair.

A quirk of a smile. “What makes you say that?”

“The commentary is a lot less forgiving than any of your other notes,” she says, preening.

Ruby knows she’s the one showing off now, but she doesn’t really mind. She’s always been surrounded by teachers and professors, and she likes the praise when she’s doing well.

But something in his expression when he looks at her, gently bursts the bubble of carefree cheer that usually accompanies these late night conversations. And it occurs to her that her professor doesn’t teach any classes that has exams.

_Why are you so tired, Professor?_

The sorrowful words rest on her lips but she knows it would be too personal a question.

“It’s not the story itself that I don’t like,” he says, pulling the book closer to look down at the woman on the page. The emotions that flash across his face then, melancholic regret and sorrowful guilt, makes her wonder if maybe he’d known her personally.

But that’s a ridiculous thought.

“That’s a pity,” Ruby says. “I kind of relate to her.”

That shocks a laugh out of her professor. “Why?”

Suddenly he looks much younger; wide golden eyes taking her in almost fearfully. As if she has accidentally shattered his hope in humanity, as if she has said something that vastly corrupts his idea of good and evil. As if he desperately wants her to take her words back.

“Well,” Ruby says, flustering. She pulls her hair behind her ear and looks away from him. “You know mum died when I was young and dad… wasn’t always _present._ And even if there was Yang it was often very lonely, and…” She smiles. “I love books. They were a solace and a guide.

“Fairy tales and heroes are where I found my dream,” she says meeting his eyes.

They widen into something more like openhearted vulnerability, and this time it’s her professor’s turn to look away.

“Finding solace in books and stories is something most of us do, I should think,” he says, fumbling with the page. “But I sincerely doubt you are the type of person to… distort the world of others for your own personal gain, to relive a fairy tale, when you have so clearly shown you are perfectly capable of rescuing yourself.”

Ruby’s heart stills in her chest at the high praise. It’s spoken so solemnly, so carefully, that she knows it is not a teacher simply trying to cheer up a student with empty words. _He means it._

“In that way,” he continues, flipping the pages of the book back to the beginning. “You are much more like the warrior in the woods.”

The book falls open on an illustration of a woman in a green cloak with black hair and silver eyes.

“She was lonely too,” he breathes, his thumb gliding down his page as if he is touching the memory of an old love, touching her cheek. “But she still did what she knew to be right. Whether it was by herself or humanity, which she was trying to protect.”

Ruby looks from her professor’s soft smile, at his eyes with glow like molten sunshine, and down at the last page of the story.

_I fell in love with her the moment I saw her silver eyes._

And it gives her something like… _hope._ An unnecessary fuel on the candle that is her crush on him, her schoolgirl crush that will never amount to anything more than a memory she will look back on and laugh at as she grows older, grows up.

Foolish.

And yet she is a fool sitting in front of this great man, this king dancing a mummer’s dance through democracy, this man who is like a fairy tale hero come to life. Ruby is a fool that blushes crimson at words that shouldn’t give her hope.

Outside the snow continues to fall, gentle and white, through the cold night, like silent guiding stars.Ruby tightens her hold on the hot chocolate in her hands, her tiny source of warmth and comfort, sweet but dwindling, slipping from between her fingers.

And she finds a smile for him. One that hurts. “Thank you, professor,” she says quietly.

His smile is as warm as her chocolate. “I’m sorry it’s only a fraction of the words you deserve,” he tells her, ruffling her hair briefly.

Then it falls away, and his gaze travels to the world beyond the boundary of the warm little student kitchen.

“Next semester,” he says, “the curriculum changes. Students from the other three kingdoms will arrive for the festival and the tournament. And with them all the politics that usually surround these types of events.”

He sits still and regal as a king awaiting an attack from the darkness, and there is something so forbidding in his suddenly rigid posture that all Ruby can do is wait and listen. Beside him stands his weapon; thorns climb the silver of a staff that looks harmless only in the hands of amateurs.

“My sparring classes will be at the same time as professor Goodwitch’s first year duelling course,” he continues, turning to meet her eye briefly to see if she understands.

And Ruby does understand. She understands that professor Port might forgive her negligence and simply assign her extra work, and she understands that Professor Goodwitch is not nearly as forgiving, that the duelling course is a lot more important to her current growth than watching people far above her do things she has no hope in achieving as she is now anyway.

It’s a warning.

It hurts.

“I see,” she says, tilting her head and finding a smile. Lying. “Wow, we’re finally getting to the tournament, huh? I’ve been looking forwards to those classes all this semester! Finally some action!”

The professor laughs as she stretches, but she feels the wall there, forbidding and cold.

He’s doing the right thing, she thinks. But doing the right thing sure can hurt. And it’s lonely.

If she’d known it’d be this lonely she wouldn’t have gone to watch that first class.

“These types of things always end and begin before we’ve had the time to comprehend the passing of time,” he confides in her with an amiable smile. “And before you know it there is someone new there in the open door to take its place.”

He is kind. Her professor is kind. Too kind and too understanding of a young girl’s heart. It’s what makes it so difficult to look away.

But Ruby does anyway. She lifts the mug of hot chocolate to her lips and downs the entire cup with fierce determination that when it’s gone, the sweetness of it all will be gone as well.

In this castle he could almost convince her that life is not a nightmare but a living dream. But Ruby is determined to look reality in the face instead and take it all in without being blinded by the pink rose of innocent youth.

She will let him go.

“Ruby.”

But even as he is the one to set up walls and boundaries it’s his voice that stops her.

Her hand rests on the frame of the open door as she looks back at him. Her professor doesn’t look up at her, and her heart hurts. She desperately wants him to look at her again. Just one last look.

“Why do you think the Warrior in the Woods died?”

Ruby doesn’t know where the words come from, from experience maybe, but she knows the truth before she has time to think about it. “Because she was all alone.”

And though he finally, finally looks back up at her, his gaze is a heavy burden full of grief and broken attachments. “Yes,” he says, his voice hoarse with emotion. He’s crying, but there are no tears.

She smiles for him. “You’re not alone, Professor,” she says. “None of us here are. That’s the wonder of the huntsmen academies. No one who fights Grimm has to be alone anymore.”

“I know,” he says, and the way he finds a smile for her says she has completely misunderstood what he was trying to say.“Go back to your team now, miss Rose. Please.”

It feels like his melancholy is trying to swallow him, and yet she can’t step closer. All she can do is what he asks, to leave him alone in that silent night where everything is blanketed in snow.

His sigh whispers in the hallway when she is nearly out of hearing range, and his words haunt her through the winter.

“It’s you I’m worried about.”

It will be more than a year before she can look past those walls and that hierarchy at the man who shares his soul, his attachment to her, and his feelings for her with another, someone softer. It will be more than a year before they face each other in the snow, with its forbidding silence and the world that falls away around them.

It will be more than a year before she is faced with a winter that unveils the entire truth of why she had fallen in the first place. Why she falls forever for men with gold in their eyes and sorrow in their voices.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
